Keith Ransom-Kehler
died on 23rd October 1933. (Baha’i News, November 1933) Born in 1876, Keith
became a Baha’i in 1921, and after the death of her second husband in 1923
became increasingly active as a Baha’i speaker and teacher. In 1929 she
travelled to the Caribbean, and in 1930 began an extensive world tour to
promote the Faith. Shoghi invited her to Haifa in 1932, and gave her a special
mission to go to Iran on behalf of the American National Spiritual Assembly to
petition the shah to ease or lift the restrictions on the Baha'is. She stayed
in Iran for over a year, but her efforts were unavailing. Exhausted and in poor
health she eventually succumbed to smallpox, and was buried in Isfahan, Iran,
near to the graves of the King and Beloved martyrs. Shoghi Effendi named her
posthumously as a Hand of the Cause, and as the first American to have the
spiritual station of a martyr.
(Adapted from 'A Concise Encyclopedia of the
Baha’i Faith', by Peter Smith)